Libraries That Say No to Books, But Yes to Cappuccino Machines

No wonder why our students can’t comprehend what they read today and why we constantly lag behind other countries in the academic categories of math and science: Even libraries are trashing the concept of reading.

Every year the American Library Association, for instance, hosts the largest video game tournament in the world. High School Musical: Sing It coming soon to a tax dollar-subsidized institution near you! Get excited! But encouraging the nation’s youth to read books on the underlying principles that helped separate and propel America to be the most prosperous nation in the history of the world, and in under 300 years no less?

Nah. That would be too rigorous. Can’t have that, people.

“Young people are getting enough video games outside of libraries. They don’t need a library to be pushing video games,” Daniel Flynn notes in our recent interview with him. Such a statement seems obvious to any person with just a modicum of common sense, that is, until you realize that it is actually a growing trend to scrap books at school libraries.

Flynn notes that Cushing Academy, a prep school in Massachusetts, got rid of all the books in their library in order to make room for myriad flat-screen TVs and cappuccino machines.

“You think for 40,000 a year, you think you’d be able to get a few books,” said Flynn.

In Part Two of our video interview, he tackles the modern-fascination with quick Google searches over in-depth reading and study that accompanied previous generations of Americans and how it will affect our culture’s ability to bequeath knowledge and complex concepts: